Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 8 of 74

GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 28, ISSUE 1 9
F
ew knew one of Kory
Sheets' hobbies while he
was at Purdue.
Perhaps nobody.
The former running back is a writer, work-
ing now on a novel while also developing
his E-book publishing company, 24KPub-
lishing. Those hobbies have become his
focus since the free agent — he's not yet retired
— hasn't played following an injury in Oakland
in training camp in 2014.
This summer, we caught up with the for-
mer Boilermaker (2005-08).
Gold and Black: What made you in-
terested in publishing?
Sheets: "Well, I was writing a book
and I was trying to get it published but I
was having trouble doing it. A buddy of mine — it
was actually (former Purdue teammate) Greg Or-
ton — he actually tore his Achilles about a month
or two before I did (in 2014), and one day we were
talking about what each other was doing. He
told me he was writing books, and I was curious
about it. I had known him for a while and nev-
er thought he'd be writing books. He sent me a
link and got me started publishing my own online
books, and I've been doing that ever since."
Gold and Black: You mentioned it was
your own writing of a book that started
this. Have you finished it?
Sheets: "I'm still writing the book. I put it on pause
because I was building the company. I want to have a fi-
nal edition (of the company), so that when I do launch my
book, it will have a lot better (reception), so that's really
what I'm working on now, building a following for myself."
Gold and Black: What is the book about? What are
your interests?
Sheets: "It's a novel about a twin brother and sister
that from birth, the sister has been saving the brother.
They lose their parents around their sophomore year of
high school, and the two basically go down two different
paths and it follows their journey. Until a point in the book,
when the sister literally goes out of her way in her mind,
body and soul to protect her brother and get him out of the
situations that he's finding himself. At the beginning and
end of the book, she's forced to choose between the man
that she loves and her twin brother."
Gold and Black: I don't think a lot of people, when
you were playing here, would have guessed that writ-
ing was a hobby.
Sheets: "Yeah, a lot of my buddies when
they saw me reading those books, they were
like, 'Yo, I didn't know you were into stuff like
that.' But I was like, 'Yeah man, there's a
lot about me you don't know.'"
Gold and Black: Did you think this
would be the future while you were
playing?
Sheets: "It was nothing more than
a hobby. I never really had told anyone I
was going to do it. My girlfriend at the time
caught me writing one day, and I showed her
some of the stuff. She thought it was good. But
it's something that I kept to myself."
Gold and Black: You got that last oppor-
tunity in the NFL in Oakland in 2014, but
got hurt, with a torn Achilles, in training
camp. Was it disappointing after, in that you
had an opportunity, a good opportunity, but it
was cut short? Are you OK with it now?
Sheets: "Now, I'm OK with it, but at the time, I was
pretty crushed because it wasn't my fault why I couldn't
play any more. It was the injury. It was the doctor not doing
his job the correct way the first time. Part of that was on
me, because I had dealt with an (Achilles') injury before
and had a doctor I trusted that I didn't go to because he
was on the other side of the country. So if I had been more
picky about who exactly was operating on me, I probably
would still be playing somewhere now.
"The team doctor basically just patched it, but didn't re-
ally fix it."
Gold and Black: It had to take a while to get over
that.
Sheets: "Yeah, I'd say about a year-and-a-half, I was
down about it. I had to sit a year, then another year, and
once I sat out that second year, teams were pretty much
like, 'Yeah, he's done for.' That wasn't the case in my eyes,
but you get to that age when people start predicting your
future whether you're doing well or not."
— As told to Kyle Charters
Photo
by
Tom
Campbell